Learning's from my digital journey

I first heard the term API during 1996-97, when I was programming in VB (Win32 APIs). Hence this is not a new term for sure. But you can hear this term quite frequently these days. What is happening? What has changed? Let us take couple of traditional businesses and see how they have operated.

Before 1990

During 1990-2010

Now

A bank used to transact only between certain business hours till some time back.

Internet Banking Came into Picture. One needed a Desktop to operate. Center and Web as Channels.

Internet and Mobile Banking All one need is some form of mobile device to operate. Operations are 24/7 and the channels are multiple.

The business model for an University to run courses on-premise between certain business hours.

Technology is changing at a rapid pace. Everyday you see something new to be learnt, which did not exist few months back. If you are like me, who has come from an application development background, what does this change means to you?

For sure, this is not for gyan. Tried depicting this in a form, which i could use as a reference. I purposefully, hace not included Desktop applications in this. If you are working in some of them, you may have include it for yourself. Obviously, this may change when we revisit this in couple of months.

Is this Perfect? Not Necessarily. This is my version and you may have a different way of visualizing this. If you create one, please do share it with me :)

Did I cover all aspects? Not really. Take Analytics as an example. If you take Descriptive Analytics, you start looking at traditional Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Data Visualization etc. Each one is a separate block diagram on its own. Hence, i have stopped it at a very high level for this.

Can i be a master of all this? May not be possible. But if we have to call ourselves as techies, then we at least need to know what these are, where we can use them and may be pick and choose couple of items that could be of our interest and master it.

One quick question, that comes to everyone’s mind is that why do i need to understand the fundamentals of Business model canvas? It is a very common misconception that a Business model canvas is used only to visualize new business models. You need to know this only if you are going to have your own start up.

In reality a business model canvas allows you to visualize a new or existing business models, how your organization is creating, delivering, and capturing value. If it is a existing business, business model canvas is based on a series of facts. Operating divisions execute the known business model. Inside existing companies and divisions, the business model canvas is used as a tool to implement and continuously improve existing business models incrementally. This might include new products, markets or acquisitions.

While org charts provided the “who” of a business, companies were missing a way to visualize the “how” of a business. Strategy Maps are one of the ways companies visualized the “How” of a business. Strategy Maps are a tool to translate the strategy into specific actions and objectives to measure the progress of how the strategy gets implemented.

By the 21st century, organizations still lacked a tool to create and formulate new strategies. Enter the Business Model Canvas. The canvas describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value (economic, social, or other forms of value). The canvas ties together the “who and how” and provides the “why”. External to the canvas are the environmental influences (industry forces, market forces, key trends and macro-economic forces.) With the business model canvas in hand, we can now approach rethinking corporate innovation strategy and structure.

Existing companies and their operating divisions implement known business models. Using the business model canvas, they can draw how their organization is creating, delivering, and capturing value. A business model for an existing company or division is not filled with hypotheses, it is filled with a series of facts. Operating divisions execute the known business model. Plans and processes are in place, and rules, job specifications, revenue, profit and margin goals have been set. Forecasts can be based on a series of known conditions.

Inside existing companies and divisions, the business model canvas is used as a tool to implement and continuously improve existing business models incrementally. This might include new products, markets or acquisitions.

How do you explain the difference between a business model and business plan? I recently tried and struggled to explain. Found this excellent post by Steve Blank here.

Business Plan

A business plan is the execution document that existing companies write when planning product-line extensions where customer, market and product features are known. The plan is an operating document describes the execution strategy for addressing these “knowns.”

Entrepreneurs treat a business plan, once written, as the culmination of everything they know and believe. All they need to do is add money and magically that five-year forecast in Appendix A will simply happen if they execute to the plan.

Business Model

A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value. A business model is designed to change rapidly to reflect what you find outside the building in talking to customers. It’s dynamic and it reflects the iterative reality that businesses face.

Hiring good people is not easy. It doesn’t matter what role you are hiring (Architect, Manager, Tech Lead, Developers, Automation Engineers. Don’t question me why I have not mentioned manual testers in this list :(), it takes a while to find the right person.

I am involved in Hiring people for the last 10 years and my average is 40:1. Unless you are lucky and know someone for the job, you may have to speak to 40 candidates before finding 1 Good guy. This average has not reduced in the last 10 years and I don’t see that reducing. It means on an average to get one good guy into the system, it takes approximately 40 hours (at the least).

After you spend so much time and on board a member, there is still no guarantee that the person whom you hired will work.

If it takes so much time to hire and on board a member, why not we spend time with those people, keep them motivated and retain them in our own teams. This is a question I get every time when I hear a good guy leaving.

I have heard multiple good people leaving off late and my frustrations has gone to its peak last week.

I recently heard a manager saying a good team member is leaving because this guy heard someone else talking for 10 minutes, got frustrated and leaving. I know that, I am a naive person. I don’t manage team members now. But, this immediately came out of my mouth.

Really…. Really…. Really…. Really….

May be, it could be just a triggering point. But, this guy would have left even otherwise. Why can’t this manager see this coming?

More than 1 million employees can’t be wrong, so bosses take heed of this. A Gallup poll of more 1 million employed U.S. workers concluded that the No. 1 reason people quit their jobs is a bad boss or immediate supervisor.

People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers.

If it takes so much time to hire a person, why don’t managers generally spend time with their best guys, motivate them and retain them?

After thinking for a long time this is my conclusion. Generally not every manager gets involved in Hiring. They don’t even speak to candidates and spend enough time before getting them on board. Otherwise, stand in the road with a board “I am hiring” and whoever comes in their way, offer them a job.

When you don’t spend time in hiring (like spending 40 hours), you will not even know what is involved in getting a good guy work for you. It’s someone else’ blood. Why should I care in that case?

Guys… Let us stop blaming others. At least let us take ownership for our own people. Start spending time with your team members. Speak to them (1:1 – Once in a month) and understand them. Be available, honest and transparent. Help them resolve their day to day issues. Trust will automatically build. 1 Lac here and there will not become a major issue.

I had a wonderful opportunity to listen to and Interact with Hubert Smits couple of weeks back. One of the questions he asked during the interaction is “how long do you think it took to build empire state building (the tallest one when it was built in 1930s)”? There were answers like 10 years, 7 years, 20 years etc.

He replied saying 400 odd days with 3400 workers… Immediately the follow up question was to complete the architecture and design? He said “No…” to complete the entire building.

I couldnt believe it immediately. Went and searched in Google and found links confirming the same.

Some of the things which i could take as a lesson from this
1. It requires meticulous planning. I am not talking about creating a plan here… Continuous Planning.

2. The architect had previous experience in building something of this sort. But again, every project is unique in nature.. The risk management capabilities of this construction was beyond what we can imagine(identify, monitor, mitigate and track).

3. The architects produced the initial design in 2 weeks, based on their previous experience. But, they would have refined it continuously as they built every floor.

4. Though the architects had previous experience, they would have ended up in new challenges every time. The design and development would have gone through iterations to address these challenges and not based on a big design upfront.

What this confirms is that even an industry which is considered to be the oldest, builds things iteratively and not based on one single plan. Hmm… now we are almost near end of 2013 and we work in a modern industry. But these practices are still @ a level where people only talk about it in most of the places.

Now… i will come back to my favorite place. May be after 50 years, someone might be writing about Belandur flyover. How long do you think it has taken to complete the incomplete Belandur flyover?